The Apostle tells us that Christ humbled Himself. In answer
to the question, Wherein his humiliation consisted? our standards wisely content
themselves with the simple statements of the Scriptures: “Christ’s humiliation consisted
in his being born and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the
miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being
buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.”

On all these points the schoolmen and modern philosophical
theologians have indulged in unprofitable speculations. All that is known, or can
be known respecting them is the facts themselves.

The person of whom all the particulars above enumerated are
predicated, is the Eternal Son of God. It was He who was born, who suffered, and
who died. It was a person equal with God, who, the Apostle says, in Philippians
ii. 7, 8, was made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man. It was
the Son of God who was born of a woman, and made under the law. (Gal. iv. 4.) In
the Old Testament it was predicted that a virgin should conceive, and bring forth
a son, who should be called Immanuel, the mighty God. In revealing these facts the
Scriptures reveal all we can know concerning the birth of Christ. He was born of
a woman. In the birth of an ordinary human being there are mysteries which neither
speculation nor science can solve. All we know is that in conception an immaterial
principle, a human soul, is joined in unity of life with the germ of a human body,
and, after a given process of development, is born a perfect child. In the case
of our Lord, by the immediate or supernatural power of the Holy Ghost, these elements
of humanity, material and immaterial (body and soul), from the beginning of their
existence were n personal union with the Logos, so that the child born of the Virgin
was in a true and exclusive sense the Son of God.

In opposition to the early heretics, some of whom said that
611Christ had no real human body, and others, that his body was not fashioned out of
matter, but formed of a celestial substance, the fathers inserted in their creeds,
that he was “born of the substance of the Virgin Mary.” This is involved in the
Scriptural statement that He was born of a woman, which can only mean that He was
born in the sense in which other children of men are born of women. This is essential
to his true humanity, and to that likeness to men which makes them his brethren,
and which was se cured by his taking part in flesh and blood. (Heb. ii. 14.)

The incarnation of the Son of God, his stooping to take into
personal and perpetual union with Himself a nature infinitely lower than his own,
was an act of unspeakable condescension, and therefore is properly included in the
particulars in which He humbled Himself. It is so represented in the Scriptures,
and that it is such is involved in the very nature of the act, on any other hypothesis
than that which assumes the equality of God and man; or that man is a modus existendi
of the Deity, and that the highest.

The Lutheran theologians exclude the incarnation as an element
of Christ’s humiliation, on the ground that his humiliation was confined to his
earthly existence, whereas his union with our nature continues in heaven. This,
however, is contrary to Scripture, because the Apostle says that He made himself
of no reputation in becoming man. (Phil. ii. 7.) It is constantly represented as
a wonderful exhibition of his love for his people. It was for their sake that He
stooped to become a partaker of flesh and blood. The objection that his humiliation
can include only what is limited to the earthly stage of his existence, is purely
verbal or technical. That He bears his glorified humanity in heaven, having transmuted
that humble mantle into a robe of glory, does not detract from the condescension
involved in its assumption, and in his bearing it with all its imperfections during
his earthly pilgrimage.

There are some forms of the modern speculations on this subject
which effectually preclude our regarding the incarnation as an act of humiliation.
It is assumed, as stated on a previous page, that this union of the divine and human
is the culminating point in the regular development of humanity. Its relation to
the sinfulness of man and the redemption of the race is merely incidental. It would
have been reached had sin never entered into the world. It is obvious that this
is a mere philosophical theory, entirely outside of the Scriptures, and can legitimately
have no influence on Christian doctrine. The Bible everywhere teaches that God sent
his Son into the world to save sinners; that He was born of a 612woman and made under
the law for our redemption; that He became man in order that He might die, and by
death destroy the power of Satan. No speculation inconsistent with these prevailing
representations of the Word of God can be admitted as true by those to whom that
word is the rule of faith.

Christ was born in a Low Condition.

Not only the assumption of human nature, out also all the
circumstances by which it was attended enter into the Scriptural view of the humiliation
of our Lord. Had He when He came into the world so manifested his glory, and so
exercised his power, as to have coerced all nations to acknowledge Him as their
Lord and God, and all kings to bow at his feet and bring Him their tributes, enthroning
Him as the rightful and absolute sovereign of the whole earth, it had still been
an act of unspeakable condescension for God to become man. But to be a servant;
to be born in a stable and cradled in a manger; to be so poor as not to have a place
where to lay his head; to appear without form or comeliness, so as to be despised
and rejected of men, makes the condescension of our Lord to pass all comprehension.
There is, indeed, a wonderfu1 sublimity in this. It shows the utter worthlessness
of earthly pomp and splendour in the sight of God. The manifestation of God in the
form of a servant, has far more power not only over the imagination but also over
the heart, than his appearing in the form of an earthly king clothed in purple and
crowned with gold. We bow at the feet of the poor despised Galilean with profounder
reverence and love than we could experience had He appeared as Solomon in all his glory.